Web search engines permit users to search for particular web sites within the range of known web sites. In many cases, users perform searches in order to ultimately find a single page.
In order to perform a search, a user submits a query containing one or more query terms. For example, a user may submit a query to the web search engine containing terms that the user believes are words contained by a web page sought by the user. A query server program processes the query to identify pages matching the terms of the query. The pages identified by the query server program are individually known as results, and collectively known as a result set. The result set is typically displayed to the user as a list of results each describing one of the identified pages. This list may be ordered in various ways. For example, the list may be ordered based on the extent to which the identified page corresponding to each result matches the terms of the query.
For many queries, it is common for result sets to contain tens or hundreds of results. Where the user is performing the search in order to find a single page, the application of conventional approaches to ordering the result set often fail to place the sought page or pages near the top of the result set, so that the user must read through many other results in the result set before reaching the sought page. In view of this disadvantage of conventional approaches to ordering result sets, a new, more effective technique for automatically ordering result sets in accordance with collective and/or individual user behavior would have significant utility.